


Captured Shield

by Raufnir



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, FFXV Brotherhood, Hurt, Kidnapping, M/M, Tumblr Prompt, brotherhood gladio, but not gratuitous, comfrot, gladnis is background, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 23:42:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13375545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raufnir/pseuds/Raufnir
Summary: Brotherhood era, Gladio is taken on his way home from the citadel. He tries to stay strong, thinking of his family and his friends, but he has no idea what he said in those moments he can't remember.After seeing a post by Kaciart about Gladio getting captured and roughed up for information, I wrote this.





	Captured Shield

_Gladio: Just finished with Princess. Tell dad I’ll be home for supper in 20mins. Hope your math test went ok. Luvya x_

_Iris: Aced it. Doing homework and watching Talcott. See you soon ugly xxx_

_Gladio: Don’t eat too many snacks before dinner. You’re already growing like a weed_

_Iris: Love you too._

 

Gladio set off from the training room, waving goodbye to the prince as Ignis collected the fourteen year old prince and shepherded him back up to the citadel in the fading light. Ignis tossed him the briefest of little smiles, and his stomach flipped over.

Grinning like a loon, he stepped out into the chilly evening. Everything had an eerie, unsettling blue wash to it, like all the colour was being slowly expunged from the world with the setting sun. Gladio shivered and drew the neck of his hoody up around his ears.

Deciding that, tired as he was, it’d be quicker and warmer to run through mid-January evening, he picked up the pace after he passed the Citadel’s main security point. Nodding curtly at the Glaives on duty, he turned for home.

It wasn’t until he’d turned the corner from the palace that he heard the sound of a vehicle approaching from behind. He thought nothing of it at first, but when it didn’t overtake him, he snatched a quick look over his shoulder, frowning. The van had slowed to keep pace with him, and his adrenalin levels rocketed.

Before he could react, however, the van shot forward, and the side door opened. A man burst through the opening and swung something heavy at Gladio’s head. He was so shocked that he could barely raise a hand in defence, and as the man dealt him a weighty blow on the back of the head, right before everything went blank, shame billowed thick and acrid in Gladio’s throat. He should have known, should have reacted sooner… Should have…

Nothing.

 

***

 

“Iris?” Clarus’ voice cut through the laughter and Iris looked up from where she’d been animating a soft cactaur plushie for Talcott, who seemed obsessed with it.

“Daddy,” she smiled, setting the toy down in front of the one year old boy on his play mat and running over to her father. He barely managed to hang his coat up on the peg in the hall before she collided with him.

“Gladio not home yet?” Clarus frowned, hugging his daughter and looking around for evidence of his behemoth of a son.

Her brows furrowed. She’d forgotten about Gladio’s text entirely. Heading back to the table where her homework was now stacked neatly, she picked it up. Nothing. “He texted me, like, forty-five minutes ago. Said he was on his way home.” She looked up at her father her huge, golden brown eyes filling with fear. “He said he’d be twenty minutes.”

Clarus’ face went paler than usual. His children had inherited their mother’s darker colouring, and now, as he stood in the flickering firelight of the living room, he looked like a ghost. He took his phone out and punched the contacts until he found his son’s name. The phone rang over and over, eventually going to voicemail. “Dammit, Gladiolus, where are you? If you stopped somewhere on the way home, you let me know, alright?”

After another hour, the atmosphere in the Amicitia Mansion was so thick you could have cut it with one of Talcott’s plastic baby-spoons. Jared emerged from the kitchens, enquiring about supper arrangements, to find Clarus barking orders down the phone at the Crownsguard to set up a trace on the GPS on Gladio’s phone.

“What do you mean switched off? Where was the last location then?”

“What’s going on?” Jared asked, touching Iris on the shoulder. She was tense, shaking, and pale. “Miss Iris?”

She cradled Talcott on her lap, bouncing him idly up and down. He stared at her with his massive hazel-green eyes, reaching unsteady, pudgy fingers for her face. “It’s Gladdy,” she told Jared blankly. “He’s missing. No one’s seen him since he left the citadel over an hour ago.”

“Oh Astrals,” Jared breathed. “Here, let me take young Talcott for you. I’m sure Master Gladiolus will turn up soon…”

At exactly that moment, Clarus erupted. His fist thundered down on the table, and, for the first time in her life, Iris heard him swear.

A tear slipped down Iris’ cheek and she just stared at her father as he hung up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Daddy?” she asked after a moment, her voice quavering. “What’s happening?”

Clarus looked up at her. “He… Oh kiddo,” he gasped, panic filling his ice-blue eyes. “He’s been kidnapped. They caught it on a bank’s CCTV no more than a hundred yards from the Citadel…”

 

***

 

Pain ripped through Gladio’s head as yet another blow connected with his skull. The brass knuckles were spattered with blood, and his vision was vague and shadowy, his mind too.

“Tell us the rotation of the guards,” the voice demanded.

“Go fuck yourself,” Gladio snarled, spitting a great clot of blood out.

Another blow and his consciousness flickered.

When he next came to, there wasn’t a single part of him that didn’t hurt. His wrists were bound behind his back with rope, so tightly he couldn’t move a muscle, and every fibre of his body screamed at him from being locked in that position for Gods alone knew how many hours.

Rough hands grabbed him and he realised his ankles were free of the ropes that had bound him to the chair. He began to take inventory of his body. He couldn’t breathe through his nose, and he was going to assume it was broken by the way it hurt. All he could taste in his mouth was blood. His left eye wouldn’t open.

Before he could react, he was being made to stand, a wicked-cruel blade just nicking him under the chin to get him to stand before retreating somewhere out of his foggy perception. He couldn’t really hear what they were saying properly behind the ringing in his ears, but he got no further than half a pace forwards before his knees gave out and he crashed to the floor.

Blackness swallowed him again.

Pain in his shoulder joints tore him from oblivion next. That, and a sickening blow to his hard stomach. The world swung oddly. Perhaps his balance had gone too now. His feet were freezing.

“Tell us the security code for the eastern entrance,” a different voice said. This one was calmer, and Gladio had the impression this guy could go with this on all day.

“Go…f-”

“Fuck myself, yes, you told me that already. How about I go fuck your sister instead?”

“No!” he gasped, fighting the restraints with everything he had, which, admittedly at this point, wasn’t very much. “You son of a bitch!” and then he realised why everything was swinging.

He was dangling, his toes just brushing the floor below, from a rope, his wrists tied together, all his weight threatening to pop bones from joints, to tear ligaments and tendons apart. Everything hurt. Every gods-damned inch of him hurt. He couldn’t even suck in a whole breath without his lungs spasming strangely.

“You touch her…” he began, coughing and wheezing behind the clenching in his stomach and diaphragm where he’d been hit with what felt like a baseball bat or a length of piping. “And I’ll kill you.” He tried to open his eyes, but his vision was so blurred and a single spotlight was trained on him. He could feel the heat of the filament from there, and it threw everything else into deep shadows.

“Tell me what I want to know, and no one else gets hurt.”

Astrals, he wanted to. He wanted to tell them everything. Iris’ laughing face flashed before his eyes. The thought of his sweet sister in the hands of thugs like this was too much to bear, but then, just as his lips parted, the Amicitia family motto sailed into his thoughts.

“ _Ante omnia, gloriam_ ,” he hissed through clenched teeth. He would have to beg her forgiveness later, serve a lifetime of penance, if they even had her, of course. But he couldn’t trust anything. Only himself.

“What did you say?” the man chuckled, and Gladio heard a footstep on what sounded like wet stone. He moved his toes a little and found that yes, he was indeed dangling above rough, wet concrete.

“Honour before… all else,” Gladio coughed.

Gods he didn’t think it was possible for someone to hurt this much. Noctis’ face swam before his mind’s eye, as he had been in his session that afternoon after school: bright, laughing and full of energy for once. Then Ignis. Sweet, shy, articulate Ignis, with his bright green eyes and his little smile that made Gladio’s stomach flutter. He gritted his teeth. For them. Be strong for them.

“I am the prince’s sworn shield,” he snarled, his breathing was ragged and excruciating.

Another stunning blow across his cheek made his jaw crack, and everything went blank.

He had no idea how many times that repeated itself, and each time he came back, a new fear began to creep gradually into his consciousness. He couldn’t remember what happened. What if he told them something?

The last time he woke back in the chair, tied down to it once more. His clothes felt sticky, and he was cold. His head was too heavy. His neck ached behind the sharp pain elsewhere. There were voices.

The muted crack of distant gunfire.

The sonorous boom of something hitting a metal door, followed by the dull grinding of a bolt.

The slap of boots on concrete.

Someone shouted.

Hands.

Hands on his arms.

A voice.

Hands on his face.

Sobbing.

“Gladiolus?”

“D…Dad?”

“Oh gods, Gladio.”

A loosening of the biting pain at his wrists.

Gladio slumped forwards, unable to hold himself upright. Someone caught him.

“In here! Get a fucking stretcher in here!”

“Dad? Iris? Where’s Iris?”

“She’s at home, son,” Clarus said, his hand still on Gladio’s bruised, battered face, his other on Gladio’s chest to hold him upright.

Tears began to pour from Gladio’s eyes as adrenaline and euphoria shot through him. The tears tracked down his face, mingling with the blood and the dirt as his chest heaved in relief. “Oh gods, thank gods, oh gods,” he chanted over and over.

“Gladio, who did this to you?”

“Cor?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” the voice said from behind him as the last of the bonds were cut. “You’re ok kiddo.”

“Dad, I… I don’t know who they were. They wanted…” he hiccupped, throat raw. “They wanted… security codes and guard schedules… I… I don’t… I don’t know what I said, but… I tried…”

“Shh, son, it’s alright,” Clarus said, stroking Gladio’s hair. “Gods, look at you. Where’s that medic!?”

More footsteps, and the clatter of an emergency services gurney. “Here, sir!”

Gentle hands.

Cold cushions.

Rattling.

Nothing.

The light hurt his eyes as the lids cracked open, but it wasn’t as intense as before, and there was a quick movement that made him jump before he heard a screech, and something collided with his chest.

“Careful, Iris!” his father chided. “He’s got four cracked ribs!”

“Sorry daddy,” she chirped, sliding back a little and grabbing his bruised, bandaged hand. “Oh Gladdy, you were so brave. Are you ok?”

He grunted softly and tried to open his eyes a bit more, but the lids were too puffy. “I’ll be fine, little weed,” he grinned.

She smacked his shoulder. “You scared the shit out of us.”

“Iris!” Gladio and Clarus barked together, adding, as one, “Language!”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, shuffling on the bedcovers. “But you did.”

“Dad,” he said, blinking blearily up to find his father’s face coming into focus just behind Iris. Cor was there too, standing at the door. He nodded when Gladio looked at him, but otherwise remained silent. “Dad, did… did you find out if…” Tears choked his throat and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. “Did I say anything…?”

“No, son. You didn’t say anything. You were incredible.”

“How… How d’you know?”

“The recorded it,” Iris said quietly. “I haven’t seen it. Daddy didn’t let me, but… he said…” she grabbed his hand again. “He said you were really brave.”

Before Gladio had the chance to do much more beyond sigh in relief, the door burst open and Noctis shot into the room. “Gladio!” he cried, shortly followed by the grave-looking figure of Ignis. Ignis drew up short at the sight of him, breath catching in his throat and a pale, elegant hand flying to cover his lips as though to hide the gasp of shock from the others.

“Gladiolus,” Ignis breathed, looking pale and almost dizzy. Cor’s hand shot out as the young advisor in training swayed. “What a relief…” His eyes had gone wide when they’d fallen on Gladio’s bruised face, and he sank his teeth into his lip, remaining stock still on the spot while Noctis barrelled at Gladio and landed on the bed beside Iris, bouncing her around.

“Hey,” Gladio grunted, not taking his eyes off Ignis. It was hard to see him properly. The fluorescent strips of the Citadel medical bay glared, and stung his eyes, and everything was still vague from the medication and the potions. “Sorry if I scared you guys…”

“We’re just relieved you’re alright, Gladio,” Ignis murmured, a strange harmonic to his voice that it would take a long time for Gladio to place.

In fact, it wouldn’t be until years later, when Gladio returned to them following his trial with Gilgamesh, and Ignis said the same words to him, with the same intonation, that he realised the true meaning behind them.

Later that night, when they were finally alone in the Leville, Ignis – tall, lean, beautiful Ignis – turned to Gladio, his green eyes glassy with unshed tears. “Gladio,” he whispered, voice cracking. “How _could_ you?”

“Ig, I had to go. I had… I had to test my mettle; I had to get stronger, for Noct.”

“And what about _me_?” Ignis hissed, fists clenched by his sides. “Gods, I know my place in the hierarchy of things, don’t get me wrong, but…” he choked off, almost biting his tongue. “But you could at least have _told_ me. I had to hear what had happened, that you’d been hurt from Cor – _again_ … Gladio…” His eyes flickered to the massive scar on Gladio’s chest and then up to the other new one on his forehead. Tears spilled over and he whipped his glasses off, turning away from Gladio.

Gladio winced and strode over to him, closing the gap between them and wrapping his arms around Ignis’ shuddering body. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into the top of Ignis’ hair, following it up with a kiss to the crown of his head.

Ignis melted into him with a muted whimper, half collapsing as his knees buckled and he cried out, clutching at the front of Gladio’s open leather jacket. “I was so afraid for you I felt I was going to _die_ , Gladio. We had no idea where you were. Don’t you _ever_ keep the truth from me again. _Ever_. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah,” Gladio rasped, holding him.

It was in that moment that he realised for the first time just how much he really meant to Ignis. And perhaps how much he had always meant to him.

“I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> The post this was based on can be found here: http://kaciart.tumblr.com/post/169201941768
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr if you like @expectogladiolus. Comments/kudos always gratefully appreciated!


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